"That’s what Conference USA is trying to fix. By having its best teams essentially play a mini-tournament before the conference tournament, it is identifying and doing away with games that conferences schedule based on meaningless East-West or North-South divisions; in their place will be a system that emphasizes important, head-to-head matches between its best teams. Teams won’t have to stake their postseason cases—or, anyway, their RPIs—on their sole mid-season encounter with the one other good team in their conference. Instead, they can look forward to three-to-four games against those teams by the time the conference tournament ends.

It’s a daring maneuver, and if it works it wouldn’t be surprising to see every other mid-major follow suit come the 2019 or 2020 seasons. It’s not that bad of an idea for the Power Six conferences, either—who needs that second UNC-Boston College matchup, really? That said, the bluebloods and dominant powers of college basketball are likely not going to be all that eager to give up their cakewalk wins. They already can claim all the best seeds and the money that comes with it; they need those units, too, and won’t be inclined to share them."

I don't think the impact on ticketing, travel, fans, facilities, hotels and airplanes would be all that huge. Using the last 4 games, I'll assume everyone in the conference will have 2 home games in that stretch, and 2 road games. I'd even venture that they could set it up that you'll know prior to the start of the season if you are playing on the road on a specific date, vs playing at home. The only thing you won't know is if where or whom you are playing. If a team has to host, its pretty easy for C-USA to set up an arrangement with a hotel knowing that some team will have to use the rooms and facilities on those specified dates.

Travel is a little bit more tricky, but I'd assume you could set up an arrangement knowing that you'll have to travel somewhere (most likely unless you happen to get a game that you can easily bus to and get back in the same day, ie if UD was playing at Cincy or Butler) but those are contractual agreements that everyone knows up front and can set the out clauses (ie buyout clauses) based up standing circumstances well in advance so there are no hurt feelings.

Traveling fans get the shortest end of the stick, however I'd argue that few teams travel well, and probably far less in C-USA than in the ACC. However, if your team stinks, then you are probably not inclined to make a long trip no matter what, and if your team is good, you may be willing to jump on a travel deal at the last moment to catch your team and its hopes of securing an at large bid.

I think the downside is rather small. In C-USA the upside is probably fairly small in what is traditionally a 1 bid conference, however something similar in the A-10 which usually has 2-3+ teams in the dance it could be huge.

from my reading on it the teams will get 2 home games and 2 road games so the dates will be blocked off when the conference schedule is released with TBD in those spots

As far as fan travel I think Medford is right that it's probably not a big deal in that league. C-USA stretches from Virginia Beach to El Paso so it wasn't a very friendly conference for fan travel to begin with

With the emphasis on quadrants now from the NCAA avoiding a 2nd game with a bottom feeder 250+ RPI team is big

1. Save 2 non-conference dates for peer conference scheduling. 1 home/1 away. Starts with 2019-20 season, but some may start in 2018-19 season. "Each team will have one home opponent and one away opponent from this scheduling alliance." (emphasis mine)
2. Go from 18 to 20 conference games starting in 2019-20 season.
3. The first 16 being H/H within 5 division teams, and 3H/3A against opposing division.
4. The last 4 games are 2H and 2A based on the team's position in the first 16 games. Teams are grouped in 3's.

So, 4 less games for buy games. The question would be, is that being taken from the Power5/BE conferences, or from "mid-majors" like A10/WCC/MVC/CUSA/AAC?

Hate to be the one to find the cloud in the silver lining, but Coach K and his cronies will simply use these top end conference games as "playoffs"... an excuse to exclude the losers automatically, by default. Just like thy did with the bracket buster games.... When "they" are allowed to make up the selection rules as they go along, we got no chance of it being fair.

There are currently 351 Divison I NCAA Basketball programs in 32 Conferences. If you eliminate all the schools with losing records in any given year, while giving the top 68 schools selected a "Seeding", all the NCAA would have to do is expand the Tourney by one or two more games, and everyone could participate. Even if you allowed all the 283 teams to play each other (351-68=283) that would equate to 141 games on college campuses, dropping to 70 or so games after that...so two more games would need to be added for full participation. Dropping schools with losing records* or less than a .400 winning percentage** would probably add just one more game. Just a thought, but then the Big Boyz might lose their Conference Tournies or other perks. Why not include every one?

*There were 194 teams with a record above 50.0% in the 2017-18 season (194-68= 126 added teams gets you to 63 more games after the first round and gets you to one more game)
**If you want to be more inclusive, there were 260 schools with a 40% winning percentage (260 -68= 192 added teams results in 81 more games. This could be unwieldy, but the "committee could play with it. Just a "thought" from an Old F*rt.